


The Message, and Not The Messenger

by tanarill



Series: Making History [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Accidental Death, Anger, Assassins & Hitmen, Assassins vs. Templars, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Bigotry & Prejudice, Blackmail, Books, Bribery, Castration, Chess, Childcare, Christianity, Clothing, Confessional, Curiosity, Dairy - Freeform, Demonstrations, Disguise, Doctors & Physicians, Duelling, Easter, Ethical Dilemmas, Explicit Consent, Fighting, Food Issues, Foreign Language, Gen, Ghosts, Good, Guilt, Hospitals, Immunity, Independence, Infection, Jerusalem, Justice, Lent, Letters, Lies, Love, Medieval Medicine, Messengers, Money, Monkeys, Murder, Negotiations, Nuns, Party, People, Plans, Plans For The Future, Politics, Protestant Reformation, Quarantine, Questions, Reading, Religion, Repentance, Rescue Missions, Revenge, Roman Catholicism, Rulers, Safety, Secret Messages, Self-Improvement, Self-Reflection, Serial Killers, Slavery, Smallpox, Sneaking Around, Social Justice, Strategy & Tactics, Talking, Taxes, Teaching, Theology, Trials, War, grimoire, simony, vaccination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-09 04:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20494184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanarill/pseuds/tanarill
Summary: Miles Auditore da Roma thought the Protestant Reformation was a good idea, but the Catholic/Protestant wars were not, so he dispatched his ancestor to do something about it. Guest-starring Leonardo da Vinci, the concept of vaccination, and the politics of the Italian Wars.Takes place after Brotherhood, so read that first.





	The Message, and Not The Messenger

**Author's Note:**

> Historically, Pope Julius II was known for having a very bad temper, so please imagine him as being constantly slightly angry except for when he is very incandescently angry.

There was a letter on his pillow.

It had been a long day, because the ceremonies and duties involved in holy consecration as the pope were not short. He'd been looking forward to a good night's sleep before diving into his dealings with the Cardinalate in the morning. But there was a letter on his pillow, folded and sealed with a blob of wax. He sighed, then went to open it

_I'll come talk to you later in the month._

_Λ_

The letter was written more in a scrawl than in letters, but he felt his blood run cold. The Assassin: the one who might or might not have killed Alexander, and almost definitely did kill Pius III. The only man in Rome, in probably all of Italy, who could have gotten into Giuliano's - Julius' - _bedchamber_ unnoticed and leave only a single note. The Assassin was coming, and no number of guards could protect him.

Julius looked at it for a long time, and then went over to the fireplace and threw it in. Then he went to his new bed and climbed under the covers. He did not expect to sleep well, but he did, and when he next opened his eyes it was time for morning prayers.

The Assassin left him to stew for a couple of weeks, which at least gave Julius time to make clear that he was not going to support Cesare Borgia the way the last two had. He wasn't sure if that was going to sway the Assassin; whatever he wanted, it couldn't be money, considering the amount he was throwing at the city's aqueducts. Nor did he seem to want temporal power, since as far as Julius could tell from careful probing, no one else ever received impossible letters. That in itself was worrying.

Julius _was_ worried, but mostly, he was _busy_. Being pope had plenty of worries on its own, and none of them left him any time for anything else. This idiotic ongoing feud between the Orsini and the Colonna. The army that Cesare Borgia had camped practically on his doorstep. The Venetian Republic. And really, he was happy to busy himself with those matters. Either the Assassin would kill him, or he wouldn't.

So when Julius got back from a late mass to his bedroom at almost the end of November and found someone else sitting in the comfortable chair, settled by a crackling fire and playing a game of chess with himself, he wasn't exactly happy, but he wasn't too surprised either. There weren't that many days left, and by all accounts the Assassin was the kind of man who'd keep hunting someone for more than twenty years to keep a promise. At any rate, he looked up upon hearing the door open, though, and then immediately stood. "Your grace."

"Assassin," he said neutrally. The man was probably in his mid-forties, as hard as any lordly condottiero, but not unattractive for all that. It probably meant something that he was letting Julius see his face. "Come to kill me?"

"I have come to talk."

"And then you'll decide to kill me, or not, based on my answers?"

The Assassin sighed. "I really don't have any interest in murdering you. I'm not here to ask you questions. I'm here to tell you a few things, and then I'll go."

"But - you - you left me a letter!"

"Yes," said the Assassin, "because _apparently_ when you show up in someone's private chambers, in the middle of the night, in full regalia, and without any warning, they become frightened enough to actually die of it. I was advised to send a letter, first." While Julius was still working through the implications of that, he added, "I really do just want to talk."

Julius walked over to the sideboard and poured himself a goblet wine from the decanter before coming back. "So," he said, "talk."

"Two - no, three things. First, you're going to at some point in the next month receive a request from Henry the English king that you should grant a dispensation for Catherine princess of Aragon to marry his son the prince of England."

"And I should grant it?"

"Whether you grant it or not is your own decision; but if you choose not to, then you must allow that the English king need only repay what dowry he has been paid thus far, one hundred thousand ducats, rather than the full dowry of two hundred thousand. It is not Princess Catherine's fault that her husband the crown prince died, and she does not deserve to be turned into a pretext for war over something as base as _money_.

So he truly didn't care for money. "I see. The second?"

"The Borgia left the people - of Italy in general, and Rome in specific - very nearly destitute; if you wish to make further war, as I know you do, then have a care for the farmers who grow the corn for your bread. Their souls weigh no less on Heaven than the souls of popes and kings, and Jesus said, 'Feed my people.' You are the holy see; you can do no less."

Julius didn't really expect anything different from the man who was, after all, rebuilding the aqueducts. "And the third?"

The Assassin grinned ferally. "Making laws to prevent Jews from practising any trade other than banking, and then calling them avaricious as an excuse to steal their _earned_ money, does not make you clever. It makes you an ass." While Julius was still stunned - he expected being mocked behind his back, but not blatantly to his face like this - the Assassin continued. "Likewise the Rom peoples who you call gypsies and entertainment and calling them thieves, the Moors and Muslims who have just come to trade as honest merchants, and the whores of this city who are not, on the whole, actually very lustful. They are all under my protection."

"Is that a threat?" he snapped.

"It's a fact," said the Assassin. "If the Church needs money, then instead of selling salvation for gold coin, perhaps it should consider spending less money on gold-plated cathedrals and lavish parties for the Cardinalate."

"That is not what indulgences - "

"If the difference requires years of theological study to understand, then there is not enough of a difference. The ordinary people see the rich buying their way into Heaven, and believe less and less in our Lord Christ. I," added the Assassin, almost cheeky, "did not say the word 'indulgence.' The fact that you immediately knew what I was talking about means that you already know it is an issue, and untrue besides: the rich _cannot_ enter Heaven, any more than a camel can go through the eye of a needle - "

"Oh, but that's just the two types of Gates in Jerusalem - "

"Have you ever _been_ to Jerusalem?"

"With the Muslims holding it?"

"Mmm," said the Assassin, more a hum than a word. "I thought not. There is one type of gate in the walls around Jerusalem, the normal kind of defensible city gate. Camels can pass through them, as they can't pass through the eyes of needles, and the rich _do not enter Heaven_. In the future, if you are going to try to lie to me, please don't use other people's easily disprovable lies."

"In . . . the future?"

"I told you. I came to tell you some things, and then to leave. I have told you what I had to say. Now I am going to leave. Please don't waste the lives of your guards on trying to stop me." He went and opened the window, letting in some of the cool night air.

"I'm not. I - "

"Yes?"

"I have questions."

"I will answer one question each time you see me," said the Assassin, turning back, and then just . . . stood there.

Waiting.

Right. One question. "The rumors say that you have a ghost familiar."

"Was that a question?" asked the Assassin, refusing to take the bait.

"Do you?"

The Assassin was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "There is a dead person who follows me around and gives advice, but he categorically refuses to tell me my future."

"I could exorcise him for you," offered Julius. He was an ordained priest, after all.

"You couldn't. Believe me. He follows me without trouble onto consecrated ground, churches and cathedrals and Saint Peter's Basilica itself. I threw holy water at him once; it went through him and he didn't even notice. I am certain, at this point, that he's not a demon. Especially in light of his advice."

"What _is_ his advice?" asked Julius.

"That was a very good question," said the Assassin as he climbed out the window and crouched, balanced on the narrow ledge. "Goodnight. Sleep well. Think about what I've told you." Then he _jumped off the Castello_. Julius rushed to the window, looking out, but all he saw was the courtyard below, guards going calmly about their appointed rounds. He pulled the window closed again, and sat down, looking at the unfinished chess match.

So. The Assassin, it seemed, wanted to open relations with him. That, or drive him mad with anger.

Well. It was better than being unceremoniously murdered.

The messenger from England arrived three days later, which meant the Assassins had a _very_ good intelligence network. He'd considered whether or not to allow it, and come to the conclusion that best for all involved was the dissolution of the contract, the return of those hundred thousand ducats, and Catherine's freedom to marry someone who wasn't already her close kin by marriage. He wrote a letter to that effect, and sent several copies, one with the messenger to England and another to the combined countries of Castile and Aragon.

The other issues the Assassin had raised were more troublesome. The basic problem was, of course, that he was right: the Borgia's corruption and spending patterns had taxed the citizenry of the papal states to the brink, and wars cost money. At the same time, he couldn't very well ignore the French in Naples. Ideally, he could just find out where the Assassin was keeping all his money, and lay a tax on that, except -

Except that the summer outbreak of disease and death had almost not happened this year.

He did manage to broker a peace between the Orsini and the Colonna, at least. And cancel all plans for more Church-sponsored feasts within Rome while he swept out all of the Borgia's greed. The people responded favorably to that, and to his easing of the harsh Borgia taxes in favor of more bearable ones. The assassins responded in turn by ceasing to rout every papal patrol they met. The guards, who had spent the last several years fighting a losing battle in their own city, were not much mollified. Julius, however, was pleased: he'd meant it as an offer to talk more, and the Assassin would hopefully take it that way.

Meanwhile, there was the small matter of purging the Borgia's sycophants and allies from the Church. Many were obvious, and the ones in the clergy he could simply demonte to lesser positions outside of Rome. The nobility and condottiero were more difficult. He could not simply use one to pay the other to go away; and he was going to need those condottiero later anyway. That left the nobility, and he really could not do anything to offend them, so winning them over was the only possible option. Tax relief was an option, but again, funds. He settled for attending a lot of parties and cajoling and unspoken promises, in between reading up on witchcraft.

Cesare Borgia had been seen in the city, sniffing about, no doubt trying to convince the nobles to revolt against him and remove him from the papacy. The nobles at least did not seem interested. Cesare could tell, too, and became increasingly hounded in the weeks before Christmas.

It came to a head almost on Christmas itself, and in the end, he didn't have to do anything. The assassins did all the work, taking down Cesare's guard before finding someone to take him under arrest to Julius. Fabio Orsini, of all people, was the one who was given that duty. He locked Cesare in the Castello, and then went out the perform midnight mass. Then he went to his chambers to read the letter Fabio had delivered along with Cesare.

_I'll come see you after Twelfth Night._

_Λ_

It was written in the same messy hand as the last, which was reasonably assuring that it was the same person. He could wait until after Twelfth Night; he was busy enough himself as it was, even with the much-reduced parties.

The Assassin waited until the third week of January to appear in his personal chambers. This time he was reading, or at least, he had an open book. He wasn't sounding anything out and his lips weren't moving, but he seemed to be learning the words anyway because he said, "The _Malleus Maleficarum_. Interesting reading, your grace."

"You admitted to having a familiar." He was not going to show any fear. Anger, yes, but not fear.

"I admitted having a _haunting_."

"What's the difference?"

"Is that your question?"

" . . . no. What did the Borgia do to you, that you took such vengeance?"

"The only vengeance I took was to crush the hopes of a man who was already dying," said the Assassin. "And to catch Cesare for you, but that's less vengeance and more preventing him throwing more lives into his idiotic wars. Rodrigo . . . his conspiracy murdered most of my family, including my younger brother, who was, at the time, _eight_." Which was more or less what he'd already known. "Whether or not a man is a traitor, there is no excuse for murdering a child below the age of reason. Heaven judges each person on their own merits; the pope, or even a cardinal, should do no less."

"I . . . see," said Julius, who suspected that the Assassin was going to hold him to his extremely high standard. By all accounts he'd had the opportunity, more than once, to kill Rodrigo, Cesare, and even Lucrezia Borgia, and had not taken them. Lucrezia could be explained as the pity of a man for an admittedly beautiful woman, but Rodrigo, and especially Cesare . . . 

"Yes," said the Assassin, carefully. "I think you do. That isn't what I came to tell you. I came to talk to you about slavery."

"Slavery," he said, confused by the non-sequiter.

"We rescued fifty children a couple of years ago. Cesare was selling them as slaves to Muslims in Constantinople to fund his wars."

"He was _what_?"

"Like I said, we rescued them. I must tell you, assassins do not approve of slavery."

Julius scoffed. "I should hope not!"

"Oh?"

"Buying and selling Christians! It is an act of the Romans, not in any way an act of Christ."

"But it _is_ an act of Christ to buy and sell people who aren't Christian?" asked the Assassin, which was when Julius saw the trap.

"Jews and gypsies and Muslims?" he asked. "You said they are under your protection, and I'm not stupid, but - I don't understand why you protect them."

"'Am I my brother's keeper?'" quoted the Assassin, soft, deadly. "Are they not human beings, God's children, and worthy of protection? I can do that here in Rome. I can't protect everyone in Christendom from," his lips quirked a little, "Christian _charity_. Jesus is love, but many of the things the Church does in His name are not. Waging unnecessary war is the least of it."

"What would you have me do, then? Allow dictators to take the papal states, one by one? Your lover the Tiger of Forlì is not less a dictator for being a woman!"

"No," said the Assassin. "And the Church, from the point of view of the farmers who work that land, is not less a dictator than Caterina Sforza. You know serfs from Hungary and Russia escape to the Ottomans in Constantinople because their treatment by heathen Muslims is better than the treatment they get from their own Christian lords?"

"They do not!"

"They do," said the Assassin. "And the ones here would do the same, were it possible." He stood up, apparently to go jumping out the window again.

"Then what do you think I should do, since you seem to have an answer for everything? About the papal states?"

"The point of those lands is to be able to support the Vatican and the priests of Rome," said the Assassin. "If they are not, then either the Vatican or the priests of Rome are obviously much too expensive. Announce a year of penitence, to return from the excesses of the Borgia to the humility of Christ. Or something like that. Impose a very strict limit on spending: for essentials, like bread and lentils and beer, and non-essentials, like white bread made of sifted flour and fine meats, and absolutely unnecessary luxuries, like rare spices and precious gems. You can use the savings to pay your army."

"That will only work for one year!" said Julius.

"And it will take you longer than that to secure the papal states, with Cesare in the dungeon and the assassins - well, we won't help you, but we won't get in your way either. You don't have to completely remove the restrictions after a year, either. It was a pope, after all, and not Jesus or Peter, who decided that priests should be celibate."

Julius swallowed. "And the French? I am sure they have not given up on Italy, despite their abandonment of Cesare."

"You need a navy, in that case. I hear Venice can build you a nice one."

"Venice!"

"You are surrounded by enemies, Julius. You'll have to make peace with _someone_, and if you want to go after Constantinople, you'll need a navy. Venice has the best. My advice is to let Venice have the farms it needs to feed its people and supply its ships, and in return demand a papal navy built and crewed by those same people. Attack the French supply ships. Without a navy, their supply lines have to go over the Alps."

That couldn't last through even a single winter, when the mountain passes were snowed shut. The French, without food, would be forced to leave Italy by next January at the latest.

Julius stared at him. It was just crazy enough to be workable. He said, "And the kingdom of Naples?"

"I'm not going to do all of your thinking for you, Julius," said the Assassin, almost chidingly. "I don't really have time tonight to stay here and chat, but - think about what I've said. I'll come back."

"When?"

The Assassin shrugged. "Before Lent, probably."

Then he actually did go out the window, leaving Julius behind to - think about what he'd said. As Julius turned away from closing the window, he saw the chessboard, sitting on the table by the fire, and had an idea.

He finished reading the _Malleus Maleficarum_ while thinking very hard indeed about the Assassin's other suggestions. The thing was, none of the things the Assassin had said were untrue, not even the one about Christians fleeing to Muslim lands. Or his designs to bring Constantinople back under Christian rule. He had no idea how the man had even found out: Julius hadn't discussed it with anyone. His assessments - that Julius would need a navy, that Venice had the best - were fair. He didn't seem particularly interested in helping Julius, but it was clear his feud had never been with _the Church_ and he'd stood his followers down almost as soon as Julius had made an overture of peace. Besides he was an assassin, he'd worked for Lorenzo de Medici. He certainly had a price, if only Julius could learn what it was.

One thing was clear, though: a year of Lent would bring the Cardinalate into revolt against him, and he wouldn't last long after that. They hadn't become monks for a reason, after all. But Julius could, he thought, put into effect a second fish day. He could create sumputary canon laws, based on the Old Testament descriptions of priestly garments, restricted to linen and wool instead of expensive satins and silks from the Orient. He could, indeed, announce a year of penitence and prayer, to cleanse the taint of the Borgia from the Vatican.

Julius sent a letter to the Venetian doge. It didn't get a response before the next time the Assassin came a fortnight later, just a week before Lent. As before, he was sitting in the chair in front of the fire. This time, as last, he was reading a book; but now he was apparently taking notes on it as well, if the daybook he had next to it was any indication. He let Julius get much closer, close enough to read a little and recognize the _Greek_, before saying, "It is generally rude to read over other people's shoulders, your grace."

"I was curious. About what kind of thing a man like yourself reads."

"In this case, Aristotle," said the Assassin, closing the book and standing up, ceding him the chair. It was comfortably warm.

"And in the original Greek, no less," said Julius, surprised despite himself. The Auditores had been minor nobility: their sons would have learned Latin for business purposes, of course, but they could hardly have afforded the university education that would have required Greek.

"I needed to annotate _On Generation and Corruption_ anyway, and I figured I may as well learn the language."

Julius paused. "Most people learn the language to read the books."

"I am not most people," said the Assassin, picking up said book, and his own notes, and packing them away.

Julius snorted. "What did you want to tell me about today?"

"Nothing. You were the one who wanted to talk - "

"I was not!"

"About strategy and tactics, presumably," finished the Assassin as though he hadn't spoken.

Julius was about to angrily brush him off, when he realized: this was the man who'd _won_ against Rodrigo Borgia, to the point that he'd been able to have a fist fight, with the pope, in the middle of the Vatican, and Rodrigo hadn't been able to do anything about it then or any time thereafter. He said, cautiously, "Well, if the King of France suddenly decided to drop dead . . . "

The Assassin let out a soft amused breath. "I think not."

"No? I'd pay."

"You cannot afford my price," said the Assassin.

"I am the bishop of Rome!"

The Assassin raised an eyebrow. "And?"

Right. The man didn't care about money. "Fine, then. What _do_ you want?"

"That's your question?"

"That's my question."

"Many things. My father and brothers returned to me, alive. For the conspiracy that did it to have been brought to justice, instead of merely vengeance. For people to have lives free of war and plague and hunger."

But not the fourth horseman, Julius noted. An assassin wouldn't want a world without death. "I meant, what would you like in return for the king of France falling over dead."

"And I told you. Oh, not about my family, obviously, but the rest of it? A world where a cardinal can get away with murder, and in fact can buy or bribe or blackmail his way into the papacy? For all you're an improvement, you show that there hasn't really been any change - no offence. And you have no interest in ending the wars, much less the plagues or famines."

"_No one_ can end plagues and famines!"

"You think that, but just because you think it doesn't make it true," said the Assassin. "If I were to tell you that there is no cure for smallpox, but there is a simple and effective way to _prevent_ people from ever getting it, what would you do?"

"Ask you prove it," said Julius immediately.

The Assassin nodded. "And if I could prove it to you, simply, definitively, and without any doubt? Would you support this preventative treatment?"

"Of course!"

Even if it means going against God's will, who meted out the pox and plague to men for their wickedness?"

Julius didn't even really have to think. "If there is a treatment, then God made it to be used. Besides, every good parent punishes their children, but no punishment lasts forever."

"And you'd spread knowledge of this treatment freely? To Jews and Muslims and pagans in lands yet unknown, simply because they are human and God's children and no one deserves to die of smallpox when there is an effective treatment?"

Julius lost patience. "_Is there a treatment or not_?" he demanded.

"We _are_ going to do the proof publicly," said the Assassin. "We're going to build a hospital specifically for those suffering smallpox, and we're going to staff it with people who are already protected, and we're going to demonstrate how to protect someone. And, because we are Christians and we believe that Christ is love and that, that just as hate done in Christ's name is still the devil's work, good done in the devil's name is Christ's work, we are going to spread the knowledge of this technique as far as it is possible to spread it.

"That's not my price," he added, while Julius was still gaping. "Smallpox is . . . well, it is not _easy_, but of the deadly diseases it is the _least difficult_ to eradicate. My price for killing the King of France is that you must first prove that he is a wicked man, the sort who knows about the treatment and then deliberately denies it to his people. This thing, I think, you cannot prove, because it is simply not true.

"I am not a mercenary, Julius, who you can pay and send out to kill your enemies. I am an assassin; first and foremost I serve the creed, and secondly I serve the people. Temporal rulers take a very distant third. Remember that." He turned to open the window.

"I'm not a temporal leader," said Julius.

"I told you not to tell me other people's faded lies," said the Assassin, without turning around. "I'll see you after Easter, probably." He left.

Julius looked at the fire for a long time. Prove that the king of France deserved to die. He felt certain, after that speech, that spurious charges or excommunication wouldn't sway the Assassin one bit. He hadn't even killed _Cesare_.

Then he glanced over, and froze.

On the chessboard, one of the black pieces had been moved to match his own white pawn.

He didn't hear anything from the Assassin all the way through Lent and Easter and into Eastertide. Well, nothing _personally_. In general, he couldn't help but be aware of the assassins launching a smallpox hospital on Tiber Island jointly with the Benedictine nunnery that was entrusted with the Chiesa di San Giovanni Calibita. It would have been normal, or at least somewhat acceptable, if the assassins had simply been funding the hospital; but, no, they could never do things the normal way. Instead, they'd purchased one cow and hired a dozen dairymaids from all over the city. It was unclear why they thought a dozen dairymaids were necessary for a single cow.

Sometime during the second week of this, Julius realised that he was being told so he could, if he wanted, denounce the assassins. He did not, mainly because he was curious about the assassins' smallpox-preventing treatment. He remained curious through most of Lent, during which the worst thing to happen was an outbreak of cowpox in the nunnery. The dairymaids helped the nuns get through that, and were then released back to their actual jobs.

Then, and only then, did the hospital open and begin accepting patients. As far as anyone could tell, the nuns were being good Christian nurses, tending the sick and offering prayers on their behalf. The assassins were being . . . bizzare, making the sick drink some horrible milk-honey-salt concoction and painting them with honey before bandaging their pox. It didn't make any sense, but it didn't hurt anyone, so he still didn't condemn it. By Easter, the first of the patients had recovered.

None of the nuns got sick.

At Easter Mass, Julius announced his new sumptuary edicts and that he, personally, was going to complete a full year of Lent as penitence. He did not command, but strongly encouraged, the other cardinals to join him. He got back to his rooms only to find that a chess piece had been moved. No letter, though.

Only a few weeks into Eastertide, it had become apparent that whatever the assassins were doing with the horrible milk drink and the honey, it was working. Smallpox usually killed one out of every three or four people who got it, but instead, in that hospital it was only claiming the lives of one in ten. He didn't believe the news at first, and continued not to believe it for weeks until he got so curious he had some of his guards go find one of the recovered patients so he could interview her. She described a fairly normal hospital, aside from the assassins smearing honey all over everyone, with one startling exception: the assassins were obsessed with soap. The hospital went through easily five or six bars _per day_, washing not only the clothing and bedclothes, but the bowls, cutlery, furniture, and even the walls and tile (tile!) floors. He thanked her politely and blessed her and sent her home.

People continued to come out alive, more often than not, to the point that the nuns had to start turning away the sick because they didn't have beds for everyone. It was at this point that the assassins, never very many in number, stopped nursing anyone and went back to their regular patrols. The nuns kept up their incomprehensible methods, because, well, they worked better than anything anyone else had tried. The assassins were still funding the place, and would continue to do so.

They also planned to give a series of public demonstrations, at the Amphitheatrum Castrense if possible, and the open area near the Colosseum if not, with the topic being _On the Spread and Prevention of Smallpox_. Everyone who wanted to come was invited, three o'clock next Sunday, but midwives and doctors were especially encouraged to attend. Julius wondered how the assassins were getting their news out into the rumor network. He'd spend a lot of money to have a spymaster that good.

He went, of course. Along with - at a coservative estimate - three quarters of the city. He had to give the assassins proper respect for picking a venue where everyone could not only _fit_, but actually hear the people on stage. The impressive part was the one where there were white-robed figures, circulating through the theater like sharks, and quietly breaking up disputes as they happened. It was very clear that they weren't giving the nobles any more priority than the commoners, and the nobles weren't happy with it at all, but no one was willing to challenge the most deadly men and in Rome to a duel. Julius was just glad he wasn't going to have to order someone to try to _arrest_ an assassin.

Then one of them came over to his group. The guards immediately moved to guard him before he said, "No, no. Let him through."

Once through, the assassin bowed politely and said in a very clearly female voice, "Master saved a few areas, as close as is safe to the stage. You are invited, with his compliments. If you will follow me?"

"Ah - yes. Thank you." As they walked, he asked, "May I ask - what drives a woman to become an assassin?"

"It is not your business," said the woman flatly, and while he was still reeling from that, "but Master thinks that under the trappings you might be a halfway adequate human being, so I'll answer. There was a patrol of papal guards who planned to rape me. Now no one can force me. Ever."

He was silent the rest of the walk.

The seating was still quite far from the stage, the entirety of the first few rows being held free. He thought at first they were being held free for friends, but as three o'clock came and the bells began ringing out the hour, it became clear no one was going to sit in those seats.

Almost as soon as the bells stopped, the Assassin came out and just stood there, quietly, while people noticed him and the conversations died off. They never quieted that fast for Julius, but in fact in wasn't more than a minute before the whole theater was quiet enough to hear him when he said, "Thank you all for coming. I have a few rules before we begin the demonstration proper. First, you have all been prevented from sitting too close to the stage. This is for your own safety: we will be bringing smallpox patients onto the stage with us, and while it isn't a perfect quarantine, it is, by virtue of certain other precautions we have taken, a calculated risk. However, if the presence of smallpox worries you - as well it should, especially those of you with young children or nursing babies - please remove yourselves now. I've no doubt the town criers will be announcing our insanity tomorrow.

"Second, as you have already discovered, we are using Claudian Aqueduct rules." Claudian Aqueduct rules were that everyone either stood in line or paid someone else to stand in line, no exceptions. Attempting to bribe one's way to the front of the line resulted in being expelled to the back. "Seating is on a first-to-arrive, first-to-claim-seats basis. Anyone after today who attempts to bully someone else out of their seat will not receive another warning.

"Third, you will be quiet and respectful during the lectures. You can shout and mock and ridicule as much as you like after, but _not here_. You may," and here he quirked his lips, although only Julius and the others in the front row, doctors mostly, could possibly have seen it, "ask questions that are actually questions, and not rhetorical mocking. You must by all means answer questions, for we will be using the Socratic method."

"The work that will be presented was the work of many hands; and, so that you do not disbelieve our results, many of which fly in the face of best medical practice, we will be performing the entirety of the work again, month by month. Doctors who so desire are invited to monitor the progress, and there will be regular visiting hours on a daily basis for this exact purpose. Except for this first demonstration, which we strictly forbid on moral grounds, we encourage doctors to repeat each one of these tasks independently in their own practice, to verify that these incredible things are true.

"I now invite to the stage a man who needs no introduction, Leonardo da Vinci himself; Jacopo da Roma, a dock worker and patient of the White Knife; and, of course, Scapegoat, who will be our sacrificial patient. This lecture series was delayed until now because we had to secure him from the Strait of Gibraltar." His words were accompanied by the bearded figures of, indeed, Leonardo da Vinci and another unknown man. Leonardo was holding a large cage containing the huddled figure of - a monkey, Julius realized. "Leonardo, I cede the stage."

"Thank you," said Leonardo, politely, and then turned to them. "People, nobles, priests - please do not be too put off by our assassin friends." The Assassin, ignoring his words, walked behind the back curtain. "They do everything exactly backwards; but, as we shall see, doing things backwards turned out to be the only way to crack this particular nut. Ah, but I go too far ahead of myself. We should begin with quarantines. Why do we quarantine the sick, who have smallpox or plague?" Everyone stared, astonished that so remarkable a man was asking such an obvious question; but then, the Assassin had spoken of Socratic method, and apparently that was serious.

"To prevent the disease from spreading!" called out one of the plague-masked doctors.

"To prevent disease from spreading," repeated Leonardo. "Does anyone disagree?"

No one did.

"Excellent! Then along with the purpose of quarantine, we all agree that _disease spreads_. It can jump from the sick to the healthy, striking all with equal severity and cruelty. Smallpox does not care about rich or poor, young or old, hale or frail. When an outbreak comes, it comes for everyone. Truth?"

"Truth!"

"And so we come to the first place where the assassins asked the right question, in their backwards way. Rather than ask, 'how can we prevent it spreading to everyone?' for which there is quarantine, they asked, 'how can we ensure that it will infect one particular person?'"

A gasp went around the theater. Ever since the Black Death, a century and a half earlier, no one would have dreamed of such a thing: to infect a community, yes, as the heathen Mongols had done at the Siege of Caffa. To infect one person specifically, though, to dare use smallpox like one might use a sword or an arrow or one of the assassins' rumored hidden blades -

Well.

"Of course," Leonardo said, "they will not kill anyone for free, or an innocent person for any amount of money, so it was just - a question. An idle, if terrible, question, until a strange coincidence brought these Gibraltar monkeys to their attention. By chance, a certain lady of Castile visited Venice for Carnival. This particular lady favors the Carnival of Venice for the masks, because she herself survived the pox, but was left with its scars. She brought with her her pet, which was a monkey of Gibraltar such as our Scapegoat here. Her pet, the ugliest animal you ever saw, was so dear to her because he also was marked by the scars of smallpox; they survived the outbreak together, and his antics were a joy to her through the worst of it."

"Of course this pet was a monkey, as mischievous an animal as God ever made, and so he made himself a famous nuisance to all of us in Venice. He'd steal womens' fans and reticules and ransom them for a grape; or else he'd hide behind his mistress' skirts and scream at passerby. We were all very grateful when Carnival ended and this lady went home."

A ripple of laughter went around the theater.

"But it so happened that the Assassin was in Venice for that particular Carnival, and heard the story, and learned: _monkeys can catch smallpox_. Now I myself would leave God's creatures, which are of course innocent, alone. The assassins immediately procured for themselves a monkey, and set about infecting it with the pox." Another ripple, this one slightly subdued. "I will spare you the details, but they discovered as follows: if one first stabs open one of the pox of a sick person, such as our Jacopo here, with a needle, and then immediately stabs that needle into the monkey, the monkey will reliably develop smallpox. Fortunately, monkeys survive smallpox much more reliably than humans - so we here should be guilty of nothing more than making Scapegoat miserable for a month. Jacopo, if you will?"

Which was when Julius realized they were going to infect the monkey right there before him! Also, why was Leonardo, who was not beautiful but certainly not pockmarked, so calmly sharing a stage with Jacopo?

The monkey screamed when Jacopo stabbed it, of course, and a good long while thereafter, its furry face going red with the effort. But eventually it quieted again so that Leonardo could say, "And now we purify the needle by boiling it for half an hour. I will be keeping Scapegoat at my workshop for the next few weeks. The disease is both faster and less severe in monkeys, but not less contagious: no one who is not prepared to risk contagion should come, but I would like enough visitors to confirm his progress through the stages of the disease. We plan to reconvene in a month, weather permitting."

"That's all?" called one of the doctors.

"You can't possibly expect Scapegoat to begin showing symptoms already!"

"But you didn't - _do_ anything!"

"We have infected a monkey with smallpox," said Leonardo. "You will understand when I repeat the assassins' demand that everyone keep to their Hippocratic Oath, and therefore make _no attempt_ to repeat this demonstration in humans lest their deaths weigh on your souls. In the coming weeks, you will be able to observe with your own eyes that this is a reliable method of smallpox infection."

"Aren't you afraid of catching smallpox yourself, then?"

"No," said Leonardo, with a faint half-smile. "No, I'm not. None of the assassins will catch it, and none of the sisters of the Chiesa di San Giovanni Calibita will catch it, and I will not catch it, and, not more than a few months after the conclusion of these demonstrations, no one in _Rome_ will catch it. Italy within the year; Europe within the decade. The assassins are not _repentant_, exactly, but by the time they die, they will have saved the lives of tens of thousands more than they ever killed."

Julius was not really surprised when, later, he returned to his chambers and another chess piece had been moved.

That time he left a note on the board, stating that he'd like to actually see his chess partner some of the time. The note was gone after the next Sunday mass he led, so at least the Assassin got it, and wanted him to know, but the man himself was not present. A scrap of paper was tucked under the piece he'd moved, though, the word, _busy_ written in his horrible cramped scrawl. Julius supposed that might even be true. He really had no idea how they'd gotten Leonardo da Vinci to come to Rome, but it couldn't have been cheap. Anyway, he had very slow negotiations to be conducting with Venice, which was a headache in and of itself, so he was busy too.

The city went a little bit crazy about Scapegoat the monkey; to the point where, rather than not having enough doctors willing to brave the plague, Leonardo had to limit visitors to only three a day. As far as they could tell, Leonardo had quarantined _himself_, and the monkey had genuinely contracted smallpox. It was not . . . ideal, to know the assassins had a way to give smallpox to whomever they wanted without catching it themselves. It was only not 'completely terrifying' because Julius knew, with absolute certainty, that the assassins were going to tell literally everyone else how to do it too.

The man did appear again, a fortnight in and a week before Pentecost. For the first time, he let Julius see him arriving, which he did through the door like a normal person, although dressed like a papal guard. Julius didn't recognize him until he said, "Yes?" and it was the Assassin who replied.

"You wanted to see me?"

"I - yes." And, "Please take that off. You don't look like you."

"Hm." He did remove the helmet, though.

"I have a - an important question, but not for you."

"Oh?"

"For the woman assassin," began Julius.

"Which one?"

Julius was immediately thrown. "There is - more than one." Of course there was. "Of course there is. The one who showed me to the seats you reserved - "

"Oh. Yes?"

"The - the men who disgraced the colors you're wearing right now, by planning to rape her. Would she recognize them again? If given the chance?"

He was rewarded with the Assassin being nonplussed, for the first time he could recall. "I am fairly certain that, at this point, one would recognize them, seeing how they've been dead for two years. Well, except the first one; he just needed to sit down and _talk to_ his wife."

Julius managed to find his voice again after a moment. "And were all the - the papal guards that you assassins killed guilty of - "

"Not that particular sin, no," said the Assassin. "I'll let you have that one for free, since it looks like you might be interested in punishing the guilty, instead of merely the poor and helpless."

"Is that what you tell yourself?" Julius retorted angrily. "To sleep better at night? - No, don't answer that. I know: you don't regret enough of them that seeking repentance would do you any good."

"Also, I don't really believe that kind of repentance the Church demands, which is really just more gold, would keep me out of Hell," said the Assassin. "Sin and money both weigh on the soul, but removing one doesn't remove the other."

"So you've said before," said Julius dryly. "Fine, then. As a priest, please answer: what do you think _would_ keep you out of Hell?"

"At this point? Grace alone. As you say, I don't regret enough that I could honestly receive confession."

"Not all the lives you think you'll save with this mysterious treatment of yours?"

"_Grace alone_, Julius, and you of all people should know better! You can't weigh lives like that, weigh souls like that. Saving one person's life doesn't make up for murdering someone else."

"And yet you still commit murder."

The Assassin shrugged. "Some deaths are necessary. What would you have done to those guardsmen, for example, if they were not already dead? The Bible would demand a public stoning."

Which was a fair point. "I'd have held a public hearing, at least."

"Even if the men in question were scions of noble houses?"

Julius found he couldn't answer. _He_ was a scion of a noble house.

"'Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue,'" the Assassin quoted sweetly. He put the helmet back on, and walked out the door without saying another word.

Julius looked down, not really seeing his papers. He was breathless with rage, wanted to demand the Assassin stand trial for his crimes. But mostly, he wanted to stop feeling such guilt at the terrible and unspoken and true accusation.

He next saw the Assassin with everyone else, a week after Pentecost at the second demonstration, herding people into their seats. This time it was Leonardo on stage, along with Scapegoat, who was free from his cage and merely on a leash. Leonardo began by giving him an apple, which he took and sullenly ate, staring at the crowd.

Meanwhile Leonardo said, "Thank you all for returning, and especially to those doctors who came and visited Scapegoat this past month. Do you care to report your findings?"

This was really only a formality; the whole city already knew Scapegoat had indeed contracted smallpox, been ill, and then recovered. While Leonardo invited a doctor on stage to deliver the medical notes, Julius looked around. Many nobles had sent a servant to arrive early and claim some seats, so they were arrayed all in their Sunday finery. He'd had time to change before coming over, thankfully, and could wear gold-edged white. The assassins also wore white, of course, but looking around he didn't see a single one of them.

" - ou satisfied that the method of pricking is an effective way of transferring smallpox?" asked Leonardo.

"Entirely," replied the doctor.

"Thank you," said Leonardo. "Please return to your seat; this demonstration, as the last, will require a smallpox patient, but I do not wish to infect anyone inadvertently."

"You wish to infect someone deliberately?" asked the doctor, voice suddenly frosty.

"Yes; Madonna Gonzaga, if you please." A woman, attractively plump and modestly dressed, made her way up to the stage. "Ladies, Gentlemen, please let me introduce you Madonna Gongaza, a governess of, I believe, excellent repute. Now, Doctor Scotti, would you say that Madonna Gongaza is at any risk of contracting smallpox?"

She patently was not. As with many successful governesses, she was selected partially because of the visible scars of that disease on her face and hands. Everyone knew that no one got smallpox more than once, after all, so even in an outbreak she'd be able to protect and care for her charges. "No," said Doctor Scotti.

"Then we will proceed." He addressed the audience again while Doctor Scotti climbed down and took his seat. "At this point the assassins had an effective way of inducing smallpox, but no effective way of preventing an outbreak. A weapon that you cannot control is your enemy's weapon, so of course they really had no weapon at all, to say nothing of the risk of _their_ contracting the disease. They turned to those people who live amongst us and who have _no_ risk of contracting the disease, which is to say, survivors, and asked another ridiculous question: what happens if you attempt to induce smallpox in such a survivor." He gestured at Madonna Gongaza. "Madonna Gongaza here has agreed to be our scapegoat for the next part of the demonstration, but as we are not monsters, we must first ask again: are you sure you are willing to risk smallpox a second time merely for the edification of these assembled persons?"

"Quite sure," said Madonna Gongaza. She had a pleasantly low voice, a little rough and very firm.

"Even though you might pay for it with your life?"

"Don't speak nonsense," said Madonna Gongaza. Julius decided he liked her.

"Then we proceed. Jacopo, with the treatment of the nuns, has recovered completely. Today we have Vincenzo as our live smallpox donor. Madonna Gongaza will perform the infection."

Everyone watched with rapt attention as Madonna Gongaza took out a sewing needle and stabbed first Jacopo, and then herself. It was such a small wound that she didn't even bother with a bandage, merely pressing finger to her arm before lowering her sleeve again.

"And that's that," said Leonardo. "Vincenzo will be at the white knife hospital. Madonna Gongaza will both be staying at the nunnery of the Chiesa di San Giovanni Calibita, and will also be available for daily observation - although of course only that which modesty allows. The disease, such as it is, happens much more quickly in survivors, so we will be able to meet again only a fortnight hence. Doctors, if you can find _consenting adults_ who will be your scapegoats, you are welcome to perform this demonstrations to yourselves. Thank you for coming, and I will now take questions."

"What exactly was the point of that?" Julius snapped at the white-robed person sitting in the fireside chair and reading a book, and only then noticed that the person was slimmer and shorter than the Assassin, and also a woman.

"The point of what?" asked the dark-haired woman who'd shown him to his seat a month ago.

" . . . proving that smallpox survivors don't get smallpox," he said, because the assassins wouldn't all be cooperating if they didn't all know the secret.

"That is not what we're proving. You have to be watching very carefully to see it, though, so we have directed half the doctors in Rome to very carefully watching one woman. It's nice to see Master hasn't already driven you completely mad, your grace. He said you might appreciate a chance to ask me a few questions. You may call me Mongoose."

It was so obviously a pseudonym that he didn't even need to be annoyed; he jumped straight to confused. "Why mongoose?"

She shrugged. "They are small and fast and clever and they deliberately hunt down and eat poisonous snakes and scorpions." She gave the impression that she was deciding whether he belonged in that class.

"Oh." Then, realizing that Mongoose might be willing to truthfully answer more than one question at a time, he quickly said, "I wanted to ask more about - your choices, I suppose."

"My choices?"

"My impression was that your master would have, ah, freed you of any unwelcome attentions regardless of any other factors, so I - "

"Oh. This question," said Mongoose. "Yes, he would have; and yes, I could have kept running to him, and he would have kept protecting me whenever I asked because that is the kind of person he is. But I didn't want to have to keep running. I wanted to be able to walk unaccompanied down a street with a wallet full of coin and worry about neither the coin nor my honor." She smirked a bit and added, "By which I mean my virginity."

"Yes, thank you," he said, irritated. "And now you can."

"Now I'm married, and there isn't a man alive stupid enough to try and rape me," she said. "The apprentices, if they manage to steal my coin, have _earned_ it; but no one else would even dare. And you must have noticed, your Grace, how much better the men of Rome behave from simply knowing I am out there - or maybe not. You weren't really in Rome during the demon doctor's terror, were you?"

"No," said Julius. "But I was in Bologna at the time and heard all about it. One of the younger sons of the Ludovisi; very unfortunate."

"I executed the bastard," said Mongoose. "Later, once I learned that he was a Ludovisi, I asked our friends to put it about that the assassins in general, and I in particular, would not be friendly to rapists, serial murderers of women, or even simply men who beat their wives."

"Your master didn't mind?"

"He told me it was solely my responsibility to keep that promise, and has spent a lot of time since then failing to hide how much he's helping me. And, well, on the whole men in Rome don't beat their wives so much anymore, even when they're well into their cups and stupid with it."

"Ah," he said.

"Or try to force them in bed ever," she added pointedly.

"Yes, yes, I see," he said sourly. "How often do you kill such men?"

"Not as often as you'd think. I generally stick to castration. Most rapists got the message fairly quickly and started buying whores like everyone else."

Julius winced in sympathy, but he had to admit from a certain bloodthirsty perspective, it was an elegant solution that didn't involve killing anyone. Just making them permanently unable to repeat the crime.

He took a breath. "In the future, please just report it to the guard. And if the guard does nothing, then to me."

"Hm," said Mongoose. "Sure. We can try it that way, but if it doesn't work, I'm not leaving my blades thirsty."

That was probably the best he was going to get. "Thank you. Please tell your master that I would value his further input on the meaning of repentance."

Mongoose tilted her head. "He isn't in Rome for summer this year. Family obligations." She paused, hand on the door. "He was right about you, I think. There's a good enough person under all the spoiled brat."

The next fortnight until Corpus Christi was fairly quiet on assassin and papal fronts, which was good because most of the papal guard was out of the city, being the Papal _Army_ and marching on Verugia. Julius, however, was stuck in the city. Summer in Rome was miserable, although less miserable now that the shit wagons existed than it had been the last time he'd lived in the city. He briefly wondered what the point was; they made money, sure, but not _that_ much once the taxes were paid. Then again, it was possible that the assassins had simply wanted to be able to breathe during summer. He envied the Assassin, who could just go to his family's town for the whole season.

He did go to the next demonstration, though. He was going to see the whole thing through, no matter what.

It was, as far as results, exactly as expected: Gongaza was completely fine. Vincenzo was dead, despite the nuns' care, but no one could fault the nuns, Gongaza, or Leonardo. Leonardo, however, still called a doctor up to read out the notes on the patient. It was four days of nothing happening, followed by one day of minor fever and headache and nausea, followed by -

"No, no, stop there. That was what happened," said Leonardo.

"What?" asked the plague-masked doctor.

"At about the time when a normal person - or monkey - starts to get the fever, nausea, aches and pains, and needs to sleep, Gongaza also had a day of nausea and headache and fever. Then, instead of progressing onwards toward disease, she _threw it off_ and was fine by morning. You'd hardly notice it, unless you were already looking; but you were, so you did. Congratulations."

"But - that's - "

"I know," said Leonardo. "It's hardly believable, which is why I encouraged more of you to repeat this trial. As it turns out, people who have had smallpox do not simply fail to have it again. They contract it in the usual way, and they fight it like anyone else. The main difference is that they - their bodies - remember how to win, and do so immediately, every time. It is like sparks during a fire that land in the well. No matter how many times a spark lands there, every one will die. But it was a very mild thing, was it not?"

"Yes!"

"And if you had to, Madonna Gongaza, could you have risen and ignored the headache and the fever and eaten perhaps just a little bred and _taken care of your students_? Especially if they _had_ contracted smallpox, and needed care?"

"Without a doubt," said Madonna Gongaza.

"As most people would," said Leonardo. "So this thing, which is very small, went unnoticed. But it is important for the next demonstration, which we will begin today."

"There is, in addition to those who have survived smallpox, a second group of people who seemed never to get it. That is, those women who tend the sheep, goats, and cattle, take their milk twice each day, and so make the cheeses we so enjoy. It is a well-known fact that dairymaids often have clear skin; and even when they grow older and marry and the pox breaks out, they do not catch it and retain their clear skin throughout. Signorina Ghita, please join us."

Signorina Ghita was clearly much younger than Gongaza, between fourteen and sixteen. She wore a practical dress over muscles hardened by cheesemaking, had the famed clear skin of dairymaids, and stood very shyly on the stage. Leonardo "This is the most dangerous of all possible demonstrations, Signorina Ghita. It is possible that you could contract the pox and die from this. Knowing the risks, do you nevertheless consent?"

"Yes," said Signorina Ghita, voice clear despite the tremor. A third smallpox patient - a child named Tessa - was brought out and the smallpox transferred. Leonardo thanked everyone as usual, and said that both Tessa and Ghita would be at the white knife daily for the next fortnight. It was fairly dull, really, for all Julius knew it was extremely dangerous, and he still didn't see the point. Fine, survivors did get smallpox, and threw it off. Presumably dairymaids did too. The doctors would be watching this time, for the very minor early signs of the disease. So what?

He was somewhat surprised to find, underneath the newly-moved knight, a note in the Assassin's hand:

_I am not the right person to ask about redemption._

_Λ_

"Not the right _person_?" he demanded out loud.

The Assassin, or perhaps his students, were checking back regularly. If he gave them an opening, say by leaving the room for more than a few hours, they would remove any notes he left on the board. They would only deliver new notes once every three or four days, which was, he guessed, how long it took a bird to fly from Monteriggioni. So he began a very strange correspondence in addition to his more regular correspondence with his army. It was not having trouble displacing the dictators; the citizens and nobles hated the men the Borgia had appointed with good reason, and often welcomed the Papal Army with open gates.

_What would be better than indulgences?_ he asked the Assassin first, because it was obvious the man wanted him to ask.

_Genuine contrition,_ left Julius in a state of almost apoplectic rage.

_That isn't helpful._

_I can't do your repentance for you, and wouldn't if I could._

Then it was time for the next demonstration where, unsurprisingly, Ghita was fine. She'd had a worse time than Gongaza, two full days of being bedridden with fever, and then she'd recovered. Tessa was also recovering, although more slowly, and was still at the White Knife.

"Now we come down to almost the end," said Leonardo, "where we must carefully consider all the things that we know are true, and then reverse our thinking like an assassin and ask the one question that changes everything. We begin:

"We know that smallpox is transferred from person to person. We know that in both people who have survived smallpox, and in dairymaids, transferring smallpox to them results in a very brief and one-sided war with the disease. In those who have survived the pox, it is obvious that it is so brief and one-sided because the defending army can quickly smother and stamp out the invading conflagration, having learned from past experience. Truth?"

"Truth," replied the crowd of doctors.

"So our question: what did dairymaids survive, that ordinary people do not ever face, that is similar to smallpox - similar enough that learning to fight this thing also teaches the body to fight smallpox - but is not, in fact, smallpox?"

There was a resounding silence from the audience. If you asked the question like that, the answer was fairly obvious.

Leonardo was already going on. "I myself have already undergone this treatment, but to prove it - to be _absolutely sure_ \- it is necessary to first give someone the lesser disease, and then, once they have recovered, the greater. For this purpose we have with us Fabio, who is usually a tailor, and Violet, who is a cow. Fabio has agreed to be our final demonstration. Violet is our live dairypox donor. Violet, of course, will be fine either way. Fabio, I believe with all my heart that there is no danger in this treatment, but you will be exposed to smallpox so as to prove its effectiveness. For the purposes of this demonstration, do you nevertheless consent?"

"Yes," said Fabio.

Getting a cow onto the stage was more trouble than it was worth, so Fabio climbed down instead and Ghita performed the infection herself.

"That's it?" asked Fabio, in surprise, once she'd stabbed him. "It's less even than a bee sting!"

"That's it," said Leonardo. "Now we wait a fortnight, to give your body time to learn, before we begin the real test."

It was all anyone would talk about the next day, which was massively irritating. Dairypox! If this worked Julius was going to - he didn't know. Shout at the Assassin for sure, the next time he saw the man. _Dairypox_!

_Dairypox._

_Yes, but no one would have believed us._

Thus the demonstrations. Fine. _How did you figure it out?_

_He advised me to go catch dairypox._

Julius sat back after that one, stunned. It was, without the three preceding demonstrations, an absolutely insane piece of advice. All the more so with a ghost-maybe-familiar, who the Assassin had, at one point, tried to exorcise. Except that the advice, if you were an assassin who was trying to find a way to make a weapon of the pox, might be slightly less a non sequitur. The Assassin was crazy enough to follow it, anyway, and then he did not get smallpox despite how close he must have been to the sick, to be inventing his weapon -

It boggled the mind, but it fit. The whole thing fit, and instead of making a weapon out of it, the Assassin had decided to show everyone. That was the kind of man he was.

No, wait. It almost fit.

Fabio didn't even so much as have a cough that whole fortnight, which Leonardo said was expected. Healthy people could usually fight off dairypox with a mild rash or fever at worst. He was infected with smallpox on a hot sunny day near the beginning of August, to a crowd that had swollen to almost everyone in the city, even though, if everything went right, there wouldn't really be anything to see. Then it was Fabio time, as it had been Ghita time and Gongaza time and Scapegoat time, and Fabio . . .

Did not get sick.

The Assassin reappeared in his rooms a week after the Assumption of Mary.

"You!" he roared. "How do you even keep getting _in_ here?"

"That's your question?"

Julius threw the thing he happened to be holding, which was a book. The Assassin caught it and carefully spread out the sheets before closing it, reading the title as he did. "_Liber Juratus Honorii_. Are you still trying to figure out whether or not he's a demon?" He held it out for Julius.

"_Yes_!"

"You yourself said that if a treatment exists, God intended it to be used," said the Assassin. "The only thing he ever does is save people's lives, give extremely good advice, or encourage _agape_. If anything, he's the opposite of a demon."

"An angel," said Julius flatly. He couldn't decide whether to be angry because of the presumption - there had to be better people to receive angels - or pity the man for his obvious insanity. "You think _you_ have an angel." 

"_Angel_," said the Assassin, dismissively. "If you read the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, there really isn't a word that means angel. There is a word that means messenger, but human kings send messengers at least as often as God, and most messengers are not divine. Besides which, I did some digging: he's a dead relative as well as a messenger."

Julius considered for a moment asking whether the digging had been _literal_, but no. "Assuming he's telling the truth."

"Oh, he always tells the truth," said the Assassin. "Sometimes it makes me wish I could strangle him."

"Only sometimes?" asked Julius, who was by now extremely familiar with the feeling.

The Assassin actually laughed. "Exactly. So. You wanted to ask me about redemption?"

"I wanted to know what you think the Church should do instead of indulgences. The point was to impose a heavy enough penance for sins that the person should really feel the impact. At the same time, it should not be a single invariable sum, because then some people who truly desire repentance would not be able to, while others would throw fortunes at their sins without a care." Julius sighed. "As I have allowed. As I have _encouraged_."

"Nothing says that the pope is not allowed to pray for guidance," said the Assassin, almost flippant except how he wasn't flippant at all. "The whole idea of indulgence is fundamentally flawed. You teach that a good deed can balance out a sin, like debts and credits in a ledger; and that is simply and completely false. The fact that I arranged those demonstrations is not going to change the fact that all the people I've killed, over the years, are dead. If I steal bread from one person and then in pennance give it to a beggar, the first man is still hungry, and I am still a thief. What should the Church do instead of indulgences? I have no idea! I'm the worst person to ask!"

Julius opened his mouth.

"But if it is going to work, whatever it is, it must be focused on - on teaching people how to be _better people_, not how to run away from punishment."

Julius closed his mouth. Julius thought about it. Julius made a choice. He said, "How do you teach a person to be good?"

"How do you teach a person anything? You demonstrate for them, and have them do it a great many times, until it becomes an automatic thing." The Assassin paused, then added, "Not prayer. Saying ave marias might make that person feel better, but it doesn't actually help anyone. Doing laundry for the sick, or cooking food to feed the hungry, or building new homes to shelter the homeless, those are _real_ good."

"Yes," said Julius. "I understand. I suppose that counted as an answer to my question, too."

"No. That was you trying to be a better pope. What did you want to ask?"

"You weren't actually trying to make a weapon out of smallpox, so why were you messing around with smallpox?"

"Almost that entire story was lies, you realize," said the Assassin. "The truth is just much too strange for anyone to easily believe, so we . . . gave them something a bit easier."

"You gave - you got _Leonardo da Vinci_ to tell that pack of lies for you!"

The Assassin shrugged. "It worked beautifully."

"_How_?" asked Julius, who was back to wanting-to-strangle-him.

The Assassin said, "And now that I have answered your question, it is time to return to our discussion of slavery and," a very slight smirk, "free will."

Julius threw the book at him again.

The final demonstration, which was not really so much a demonstration as the whole city partying because Fabio hadn't gotten sick even a little, and the whole thing worked, happened just at the beginning of September. Everyone, _everyone_, was there. They didn't all fit in the theatre, spilling out onto the hill and making picnics on the dry grass. The ones inside were packed like a good drystone wall, not even a hair's breadth between them. Leonardo climbed onto the stage first, followed by Fabio to exuberant cheering, and then a single white-clothed person.

When the Assassin put up a hand, he got almost instant silence. "Thank you," he said. "I am usually not one for large crowds - " this got a ripple of laughter " - but since you are here, I have a few things to say.

"I hope you have enjoyed these summer demonstrations of knowledge. It would be enough for anyone, I think, if it ended will smallpox, but," he lowered his voice and the silence returned, so complete that Julius could have heard a pin drop onstage, "it won't. This is not an interesting but isolated incident. It is a general principle that you can prevent _deadly_ disease by training your body on a similar enough _weak_ disease. We started with smallpox because dairypox exists. There is no weak measles."

No one breathed.

"Yet," added the Assassin.

The applause was spontaneous and deafening. The Assassin, for not being a man who loved crowds much, certainly know how to hold an audience. He let them cheer for a minute or so, and then held up his arm again. "We are setting up several tents on the lawn. Each tent contains one sick cow, and either a dairymaid or a Benedictine nun. You will form orderly lines, but only persons below the age of six or above the age of sixty, those most at risk, will be treated today. We will proceed with older children and then adults over the coming weeks. That's all. Leonardo?"

"Thank you," said Leonardo, smiling. "I would also like to extend thanks to Madonna Gongaza, and Ghita, to Jacopo and Tessa and Giovanni and the soul of Vincenzo, to the nuns of the Chiesa di San Giovanni Calibita, and to all the doctors who kept such careful notes as to allow us to determine the truth. I'd also like to thank the Brotherhood of Assassins in Rome for their role in arranging - "

Julius stopped paying attention. He was still the pope, head of the Catholic Church, ruler of the papal states and Rome - at least nominally. Maybe inside the Vatican, it was even true. In every way that actually mattered, Rome belonged to the Assassin. He wouldn't say anything, and he wouldn't do anything, because that wasn't the kind of man he was. But they'd both know.

No wonder the Borgia had hated him so much. You could either let the jealousy fester into all-consuming hate or you could decide to be the better person the Assassin demanded in his associates. The Borgia would not have chosen the latter.

He'd spent a lot of time over the last few weeks talking to the Assassin. Well. Shouting at the Assassin while wanting to strangle him. It wasn't entirely fun and it wasn't entirely fruitful, and neither of them expected the reforms he would have to make to be happily accepted by the absolutely corrupt Church he led. He'd have to be elevating a lot of good priests to high office so he could break up the monopolies of power; he wasn't even sure where he was supposed to be _finding_ these good priests, except that 'not in the Vatican' was probably a good place to start. He'd have to rid the church of simony - which meant, indeed, throwing out indulgences.

That was all without touching the issue of the expanding Ventian territories or the French and Aragonese in Italy, although he was fairly certain the Assassin could be persuaded to make those wars very costly, very fast, so as to spare the peasantry. In return, Julius was going to have to do something about slavery, although the Assassin hadn't yet told him why it was even an issue. It was probably going to upset a lot people who were, at heart, very much like the person he'd been a short ten months ago. But Julius figured that now, after putting this much work into him, the Assassin would at the very least keep ears in the right places to hear of any plot against him. He certainly wasn't going to let him backslide, even a little bit.

"So," said the Assassin, breaking into his thoughts, "I thought that went well."

"Are you insane? People will think you're my ally if you come here and talk to me in public!"

"I'm wearing guard colors," said the Assassin, "and no one really pays attention to your guards. As though I wouldn't remember something like that."

Julius was quiet for a while before he said, "Measles."

"I don't really believe in disease."

"No," he agreed, an understatement if there ever was one. "And you don't believe in famine, and you don't believe in war. You don't think much of death, either. Tell me, please: what is it that you _do_ believe?"

"What _I_ believe . . . ? I believe that nothing is absolute; and so everything, _everything_, is possible."

Of course _he_ did. But then, he'd beaten the Borgia and cured an incurable disease and turned Julius himself into the reformer pope the Church desperately needed. Everything was indeed possible.

Julius couldn't wait.

**Author's Note:**

> AND THEN THIS THING POPPED OUT.
> 
> This weekend I went to LA la land to spend Shabbat with my cousin-once-removed and his children, who are my second cousins. They are cool cousins, and also I saw _Ready Player One_. Then I spent all of yesterday writing this. I suspect writing this so fast left more than the usual number of errors, so if you spot them let me know.
> 
> Pope Julius II was, to quote Wikipedia, the best of a run of very terrible popes. He was guilty of simony, including more or less buying the papacy, and holding eight bishoprics simultaneously, which involves an amount of work that is physically impossible for one person to do. He failed categorically to reunite Italy, much less ever leave Italy to try Constantinople, but he wasn't afraid of taking bold action: on two separate occasions, he _personally commanded battles_. He was the right pope for the job of reforming the Church, if only there had been someone to push him in the right direction.
> 
> Martin Luther will probably end up being his advisor, and possibly his successor.


End file.
